'Flo' Telehealth - Case Studies

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Case Studies

The Innovation Case Studies section provides a comprehensive list of exemplar innovation projects from across the NHS. These innovations have been carefully selected to represent a range of ideas from medical technologies through to service and pathway re design. Each case study provides a background to the innovation and a contact for further information.

Click on the Case Study Browse area on the right to find examples by clinical area.

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'Flo' Telehealth

Over 15 million people in the UK live with a long term condition (LTC) and 'Flo' offers a simple way to increase self-management, resulting in fewer visits to GPs, a reduction in hospital admissions and decreasing reliance on home visits.

NHS owned, at just 8p per text (free for patients) it is highly cost effective to

administer across a wide range of LTCs; driving down costs and enabling bigger

caseloads to be managed within existing resources.

East Midlands, North East & North Cumbria and West Midlands AHSNs have adopted this approach.

Key learning

• With support from the three AHSNs this telehealth innovation is now being used by over 70 health and care organisations

• 33,000 patients are registered to use Flo for a wide range of conditions using clinically approved pathways, a 300% increase in just 12 months

• The East Midlands have demonstrated:

– Monitoring of oxygen saturation levels resulted in a 40% decrease in expected hospital admissions in one setting

– Heart failure nurse team home visits reduced by over 30%; one home visit costs £67 compared to an annual cost for Flo of just £70 including all equipment

What’s next?

‘Flo’ is being considered for adoption by all 15 AHSNs during 2016-17 to support nationwide availability. Following the success of the initial pilots, some sites are integrating cancer patients into the mainstream cardiac rehabilitation programme and incorporating other cancer groups, which will effectively reduce further NHS burden and costs. Opening up the service to lung cancer patients both pre and post-surgery is now planned linking with the Liverpool Health Lung Project.